


Your Hand in Mine

by corvidity



Category: Gintama
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 09:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5863651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvidity/pseuds/corvidity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Katsura is a decent cook, and Gintoki can't complain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Hand in Mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sherryandgin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherryandgin/gifts).



> This is basically the expanded version of a [dotpoint fic](http://first-quarter-of-the-moon.tumblr.com/post/138329360452/sherryandcake-i-havent-forgotten-about-the) I posted on tumblr.

In those lulls between jobs and saving the world, they start running into Zura at various cafes and restaurants in Kabuki-cho. The kids are usually delighted, and Gintoki doesn’t know what to make of it.

“Part-time rebel and part-time cook? Where’d you find the time?”

“I make it.”

“You - what?” and Gintoki stares at the tray of dumplings that Zura’s just made, ready to be dumped into the deep fryer. Making time amounts to a kind of responsibility that he never knew Zura had.

“Maybe you should cook for us,” Gintoki jokes. “It’d make up for all the trouble you cause every time we run into you.”

“Half that trouble is _your_ fault,” Zura retorts, but he drops in for dinner at the apartment later. Gintoki instantly retracts his earlier thought about Zura having any sense of responsibility.

“Did you really have to come through the window?” and he motions to the pool of glass shards around Zura’s feet.

“How else would I have entered?” Zura wonders in complete, genuine confusion.

“I don’t know, through the door?”

*

Eventually, Gintoki starts leaving the window open so that he doesn’t have to pay for the repairs. There’s only so many times he can get away with the “stray cats got in” excuse, and Otose’s softness for felines isn’t infinite (neither is his wallet).  

It’s much to Gintoki’s annoyance that Zura walks in via the front door one day. “I go to all the bother of leaving open the window, and you suddenly find your manners?”

They take turns cooking, because it’s not as if Gintoki never learnt how to cook; he just chooses not to. Shinpachi and Kagura stare at him in horror when he first serves up a basic meal of rice and tempura.

“Zura,” Kagura whispers, “What’s wrong with Gin-chan? Is he – is he _doing_ something without being told to?” Shinpachi looks as if he’s about to keel over, his face ashen.

In the weeks that follow, Gintoki puts ever more effort into one-upping whatever Zura cooks, because no terrorist uncle is going to usurp him. He even buys himself a proper apron (it was less than 300 yen), plastic pinkness be damned.

Not that it makes any difference, because the kids always side with Zura.  

“Why?!” Gintoki wails one evening.

“He doesn’t burn the rice,” Kagura points out, licking the rice paddle clean.

“But I like my rice burnt!” he protests. “It’s crunchier that way.”

Zura looks up from where he is scraping the rice cooker clean with a wooden spoon, Shinpachi valiantly trying to help. “Allow me, Shinpachi-kun,” Zura says, and hauls the entire cooker into the sink to attack it with a scrubber.

Shinpachi mops his brow and collapses at the dining table. “Katsura-san is very responsible.”

_Anyone with a duck-Amanto-thing for a pet can’t be responsible,_ but Gintoki, for once, isn’t up to arguing the finer points. And in some traitorous, secret part of him, he’s glad that the kids take so well to Zura.

*

Zura stays one night at Kagura’s behest, who insists he has to make them breakfast in the morning.

Gintoki splutters, “He can’t stay over! What if the Shinsengumi break in or something?” But he is overruled by two to one (Sadaharu slobbers his approval over Zura’s head), and even Shinpachi thinks it’s a good idea since Gintoki can’t be trusted to make breakfast without feeling the need to outdo Zura.

“So Kagura-chan won’t go hungry,” he surmises, and Gintoki is left to grumble and gripe until Kagura forces him to dig out the spare blankets.

At dawn, Gintoki wanders into the kitchen only to see Zura making onigiri, his hands moving with practised ease; the same hands which wielded a katana with such deadly accuracy. The swiftness is there, the look of intense concentration too, and the only thing that’s different are the dust motes drifting through the morning calm instead of blood.

Gintoki looks at his own hands, the same pair which took off their teacher’s head, and thinks it’s not so surprising that Zura stopped making those rice balls after Sensei died.

He says, “I didn’t know you still made them.”

Zura smiles patiently. “I don’t, but I didn’t forget.”   

Gintoki exhales quietly and leans over Zura’s shoulder, whose hands still for a second. “Gintoki, what are you –?”

And he takes his chance to swipe one of the rice balls off the board.

“GINTOKI!”  

It’s sweeter than he remembers, but that’s not a bad thing. 

*

Sometimes, Zura brings rice balls to the apartment for the kids, and when Kagura predictably eats them all, he easily produces an extra batch from within the folds of his kimono.

“What are you doing, giving them stuff when I’m not looking?” Gintoki says, but Zura only gives him a small, infuriating smile in response.

“Would you like one?” he asks, and offers him a rice ball from seemingly nowhere with a dramatic flourish. Gintoki scoffs, _as if I’d be so easily bought with food,_ but, actually, he’s easily bought with food. As he stuffs it into his mouth, Zura’s smile becomes a tad less infuriating.

These days, he still carries the war on his back, carries on for the dead and those who are living in a dead era, but at least he isn’t hungry all the time; and now he can tease Zura about Ikumatsu, berate him for his terrible influence on Kagura and Shinpachi.

“You’re a terrorist, for god’s sake. What kind of role model are you?”

“A much better one than you!” Kagura yells at him from across the room.

Gintoki implores Shinpachi to back him up, but the boy is too busy having seconds of the dinner that Zura made. “Katsura-san,” he says between bites, “Could you give me the recipe later?”

“Certainly, Shinpachi-kun.”

Gintoki has the feeling he’s been fighting a losing battle since the first day, but perhaps it’s one where everyone wins, and everyone lives.  

*

“Yo, Zura.” It’s a good name, even if Zura doesn’t think so.

“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura. And may I come in?”

Wordlessly, Gintoki shifts aside. The kids jump on him (Sadaharu too), and once they’ve all settled down Zura unpacks the rice balls he made earlier.

Kagura takes the largest box, Shinpachi the smaller one, and Kagura is quick to feed Sadaharu a good portion of hers. They give their thanks and immediately start bickering over who gets first use of the soy sauce.

“Oi, what about me? Don’t I get some?” Gintoki says indignantly.

Zura produces a single rice ball from his kimono (how does he do it?) and gives it to Gintoki, who curls his fingers over Zura’s; his hand is warm and kind and forgiving, and that isn’t such a bad thing either.  

 


End file.
